"Unsophisticated investors certainly did better than the sophisticated investors this year," says Brett Barth, a founder of BBR Partners, a New York firm that manages $5.5 billion, including $1.5 billion invested in hedge funds.

--- This week's journey to the obscure, or those interesting treatises which can still prompt a declaration akin to that of my five-year-old son ( "Daddy, this makes my head hurt!"), brings us to "Unsophisticated Lady: The Vicissitudes of the Maternal Melodrama in Hollywood" by Lea Jacobs, a University of Wisconsin-Madison film historian, in Modernisn/modernity volume 16, number 1.